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I've been watching this game for a long time. The pitch is great, the concept is wonderful, and the ambition of the project is to be applauded.

It's unfortunate that a lot of people, like myself, will have serious difficulty convincing themselves to invest in it. The reason for this is because the feature set reads like scope creep and unrealistic design got together and had a baby. The last MMO project that even approached being this ambitious was Dragon Empires - which crashed and burned when they discovered that available server technology couldn't actually handle the game with anywhere near as many players as the game was projected to draw.

When you guys have some more technical details available, and when you've fully fleshed out how a lot of the mechanics are going to work, and when you have a product that has enough substance, I'll be right there. Until then, the level of ambition of this project screams STAY AWAY.

The design is complete, so not sure where you get your info but rather than spend maybe a year on Design they have spent 8 and also written all the tools to acheive the design. They don't believe they have any show stoppers now other than time.

No other MMO can do what their engine does which is why it's hard to believe ; So unless they are lying to peoples faces I think they are a good bet. And like many of us here who have played most MMOs they have created something very special.

Worth investing in as the genre is nearly dead on it's back with respect to innovation.

It is like "Rogue" in a real size Pen and Paper World and that is worth investing in.

No other game period can do what their engine does. THAT is why it's hard to believe. The only thing that even comes vaguely close to it is Dwarf Fortress - a game that absolutely murders a computer's CPU with even 200 entities wandering around, without anything even close to the complexity of what this game claims to offer.

If you'd been keeping up with their dev blogs, you'd have noticed that they've been approaching publishers for over a year and a half now - and so far they "haven't found the right fit" which is IndustriSpeek for "no one's buying our pitch". Again, the game SOUNDS like it's amazing and revolutionary, it SOUNDS like it's what many of us have been wanting. What it doesn't sound like is something that's both technically and financially feasible. The former, maybe - I'm sure you could figure out a clustering scheme that would allow you to throw enough hardware at what they're trying to do to make it run without hitting that lovely threshhold where so much of your resources are consumed with intrasystem sync and communication that you start getting a loss for every new machine added to the cluster. Making it profitable is another matter entirely.

I do agree that the industry is nearly dead with respect to innovation. I just have a really, really hard time buying this particular pitch. Knowing the history, and having followed the game, the move to a KickStarter feels less like "We want to go it alone and we're looking for more funding to boost development into alpha" and more like "We're running out of money because what we're proposing sounds so unfeasible that no one will invest in us".

Skeptics are the reason why the MMO genre is stuck in the mud. As long as players complain about clones and then don' t back the games that attempt to push the genre forward, all you will get are clones. And just so you know, we have only approached three publishers, one wanted it, but also wanted to see a couple more things, in the end they really didn't have the bandwidth in funds, one wanted to see more and the third wanted the game. We spent several months working with that publisher, and then the bottom fell out of Europe, and since this was a European publisher, they had no bank support. We have not gone to more publishers since that first round when we found that some of them wanted to see certain things that were still in development, so we decided to get those parts to Alpha before going to more publishers.

Now, as to the technology not working, I'm sorry, but you just don't know our engine. In your example, you stated that even 200 entities walking around would 'murder' the frame rate, perhaps you are right, in their engine. In ours, we currently have over 700 in a small test area. Running the client on a mid range home style system, with a GF285 in it, we are maintaining 55 fps, and we haven't even bothered to optimize the code completely yet since things are still in development. I'm not sure why people are such skeptics, we have done every single thing we said we would so far, but I guess people feel a need to blame us for what other companies have done.

You may not want to back our game, but until you actually have proof it doesn't work, why tell people about things you don't actually know? May I ask, how many game engines have you coded?

A couple of points. First of all, what you claim is possible in the preceeding sentences has never been witnessed before and seems almost technologically impossible. If you claimed to have a flying car people would want you to show it to them, not just take your word on it. (especially if you had never built a car before, even if some folks on your team had worked in the industry previously) Same thing here as well.

Which brings me to the 2nd point, until you are able/willing to show your engine in action, people are going to continue to be skeptical about your claims, just how the world is I'm afraid. Even in your KS demo you didn't show any player characters, just NPC's walking about which isn't going to impress most folks.

The good news is one day you'll get your chance and the naysayers will have to eat their words, but until then you'll be in largely a losing battle until you can prove it to them.

Remember, even Thomas doubted......

Arrogant, Condescending, Dismissive, Elitist, "Meany", you speak as if these are bad things?Still currently "subscribed" to EVE, and only EVE!!!"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon

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I can't say this enough.. they are scammers. At this point I'm wondering if they realized that the game wasn't(vaporware) going to work and are just setting out to steal peoples money. All we have is some screen shots and a video.. They asked for 700k on kickstarter.. Instead of showing more of the game to increase interest and donations on kickstarter what did they do? They made up a fake raffle.. Really!? You need 700k and you can't even reveal a little bit more of your game it's so top secret? Come on people.. think! This is an easy one. Take that money and donate to a charity or a real project. Don't let them scam you. surly they knew it would not be funded which would give them reason enough to take in funding on their own site.

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Changed to a raffle? You've got to be kidding me! Pay $1000 and only get chances to "win" what was previously acquired through donating?!

Geez, and I thought I'd seen it all.

The project looks very interesting but you won't catch me throwing away wads of cash on a silly lottery system. Give me a break.

What a sham(e).

No, if the kickstarter hit it's mark you still would of got whatever the $1000 donation perks were. What I'm saying is they claim they could not honor the raffles from kickstarter b/c they didn't have access to people emails on there once kickstarter found them in violation.. Therefore.. they would start a new donation program on their own site and those who donated to that would be included in the raffle.. How convient!?

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Considering the relatively high price of making anything resembling a decent MMO, I can't believe anyone is naive enough to "invest" in this game (or other MMOs frankly) and expect anything to come of it.

Which is not to say KS can't have its place: I think it is a perfectly good way to resurrect some of the "abandoned" SPG game franchises of the old days and give them another shot (Wasteland 2 being a prime example).

That said, any longtime MMO player knows what an underfunded indie MMO made by "hobbists" looks like: crap.

Maybe it is the "younger gaming generation" that are being targeted with stuff, because as an "older gamer" I am not even tempted to look at this and things like this. It is either going to fail miserably, or it is a straight up scam.

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Yep! The best part about this is the Floating Island they offer to the people who put up the most money. LOL!! It's the virtual version of land for sale in the North Pole! At this point I don't feel sry for people who lose thier money to them.

They were asked to take it down because raffles were against the guidelines.

Kickstarter could have cancelled their project outright, instead since it included a raffle and WASN'T a raffle, they asked them to take the raffle down. If you're paranoid enough to e-mail Kickstarter, go right ahead.. I'm sure they'll tell you the same thing Jatar said.

Second, Jatar said in that same thread that ANYONE who sent him a PM that donated on Kickstarter and DID NOT want to enter again in the crowd funding would be entered.

Simple. PM him, get entered.

Unfortunately, you threw it in his face and got yourself banned.

If I have to pick credability between you and them.. they win, hands down.

It's unfortunate that Convo donated only for the raffle knowing the project would fail and then thought he'd get screwed, got pissed and ranted. Even after his rant, Jatar said he would still honor his KS pledge into the raffle.. until Convo threw it in his face, again.

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Originally posted by Burntvet

Considering the relatively high price of making anything resembling a decent MMO, I can't believe anyone is naive enough to "invest" in this game (or other MMOs frankly) and expect anything to come of it.

Which is not to say KS can't have its place: I think it is a perfectly good way to resurrect some of the "abandoned" SPG game franchises of the old days and give them another shot (Wasteland 2 being a prime example).

That said, any longtime MMO player knows what an underfunded indie MMO made by "hobbists" looks like: crap.

Maybe it is the "younger gaming generation" that are being targeted with stuff, because as an "older gamer" I am not even tempted to look at this and things like this. It is either going to fail miserably, or it is a straight up scam.

Kickstarting an MMO has virtually no chance of ending well.

Might as well burn that money in your fireplace.

Are you just ripping on them, or are you ripping on them after reading what the money is for?

The money is to get from their current point in pre-alpha to Alpha.

This is no different than any other game ever on Kickstarter. Some games come to Kickstarter with nothing existing. Some come in a pre-alpha state, some come close to release.

If you don't want to back it, great.. but at least read up on something before you take a stance.

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Originally posted by Convo

[mod edit]

Have you ran a Kickstarter project before?

I have.

You don't get e-mail addresses unless the project funds. You can send private PMs, one at a time, to each person on the project, by drilling down into each reward... but the PMs are for Kickstarter, e-mails.

[mod edit]

By the way, his PM him still stands for anyone.. so it's not just "for you." You just spent so much time posting negative posts they had to delete that you didn't give them a chance to respond (I was watching during the event, I saw the posts they eventually deleted... the way you treat people, I wouldn't have been as generous to you as Jatar was).

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Oh and btw.. DId you ever consider they read the raffle rule before they even put that up on kickstarter? My contention from the start is they never actually intended to honor the raffle on Kickstarter. They knew it would always be used to lure people back to their site in order to get public donations without a limit like the one set on KS..

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Originally posted by Convo

Oh and btw.. DId you ever consider they read the raffle rule before they even put that up on kickstarter? My contention from the start is they never actually intended to honor the raffle on Kickstarter. They knew it would always be used to lure people back to their site in order to get public donations without a limit like the one set on KS..

There goes those pesky facts again.

The limit on donations is placed by Kickstarter, did you know that? Do you know why? Because when you invest in a company/project over $10,000 is has actual legal and tax implications. This is why Kickstarter doesn't take over 10k donations.

If they're doing it on their crowd funding, they certaintly have that right... they aren't limited by Kickstarter's rules there.

You are looking for problems where no problems existed.

1. If you don't want to re-donate, just PM Jatar and get in the 2 raffles based on your Kickstarter donation. Done.

2. If you WANT to participate in the crowd funding (like many, many other games are doing now).. you can do so. Not only do you get into the 2 original raffles, you get into a 3rd one they're talking about too.

3. There is no conspiracy. Take your tinfoil cap off.

My question is why are you so worked up? Either you donated towards KS because you wanted to help the project and be in the raffle, or you donated just for the raffle... knowing you won't have to spend real money to get in and are now mad they asked you to come re-sign up by donating that same money on their crowd funding (even though the exception exists to just PM JATAR and get entered into the raffles without donating ANYTHING).. in essence, the second situation is really shady and they are even letting you be shady.. yet you're still upset.

As far as reading the rules, I'm sure they did.. maybe they missed it. Google "kickstarter raffle" and see how many other projects used a raffle. In this case, if you read the message Kickstarter sent that Jatar posted, they said someone brought it to their attention.. someone complained about the raffle so it would have to be cancelled. I wonder if it was you at this point.

I'm just don't get your logic. You say to think, but thinking through the facts (and not your emotional replies) leaves me at the same conclusion I had to start with...

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So...I got a warning on here for posting what I felt was valid concern. I'm going to stop now as I've been a member on here a long time and this just isn't worth being banned over. I will pay attention to this game over the next few years tho.. I'd rather be wrong in a case like this.

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Originally posted by ConvoSo...I got a warning on here for posting what I felt was valid concern. I'm going to stop now as I've been a member on here a long time and this just isn't worth being banned over. I will pay attention to this game over the next few years tho.. I'd rather be wrong in a case like this.

Yes, and Convo was banned on our CoS forums for personal attacks on the team.

His accusations are all false. We did nothing but keep our word, and always intended to.

He was told (and we never said differently) that all people who pledged on KS would be included in the new Raffle. The Raffle was moved from Kickstarter to our own web site by request of Kickstarter. We had no proir knowledge that they would make us do this. We handled it swiftly, and the best way we could. Convo was so concerned that he wouldn't get his free chance at the raffle that he started calling our team names before we could even have a chance to answer his questions. In the end, even though we told him he, and anyone who pledged on KS, was eligible for the Raffles even if they did not pledge again on our site, he again called us names and said he didn't want them now.

At that point we really had enough with his personal attacks and banned his account. He has since moved here to sing his negative song.

We wish him well, and he may still take part in the Raffle (without any actual pledge on our site) if he chooses, as can all people who pledged on Kickstarter. Not one other person has complained on our site, or had an issue. Please go to our forums and you may read what everyone else said.

Now, I'm finished with this discussion, it is not worth more of our time.

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Originally posted by Jatar

Originally posted by ConvoSo...I got a warning on here for posting what I felt was valid concern. I'm going to stop now as I've been a member on here a long time and this just isn't worth being banned over. I will pay attention to this game over the next few years tho.. I'd rather be wrong in a case like this.

Yes, and Convo was banned on our CoS forums for personal attacks on the team.

His accusations are all false. We did nothing but keep our word, and always intended to.

He was told (and we never said differently) that all people who pledged on KS would be included in the new Raffle. The Raffle was moved from Kickstarter to our own web site by request of Kickstarter. We had no proir knowledge that they would make us do this. We handled it swiftly, and the best way we could. Convo was so concerned that he wouldn't get his free chance at the raffle that he started calling our team names before we could even have a chance to answer his questions. In the end, even though we told him he, and anyone who pledged on KS, was eligible for the Raffles even if they did not pledge again on our site, he again called us names and said he didn't want them now.

At that point we really had enough with his personal attacks and banned his account. He has since moved here to sing his negative song.

We wish him well, and he may still take part in the Raffle (without any actual pledge on our site) if he chooses, as can all people who pledged on Kickstarter. Not one other person has complained on our site, or had an issue. Please go to our forums and you may read what everyone else said.

Now, I'm finished with this discussion, it is not worth more of our time.

I find the timing of your response interesting considering what you quoted.. I'm done with this as well. I posted my concerns so have others in this thead. Looking forward to seeing all this secret stuff you can't show..Like I said Time will tell and If I'm wrong I'll be the first to admit it. But I doubt I will be. I always go with my gut and it's telling me something isn't right here. So please leave this go as I will do the same.